Users of computer systems interact with and collect content items in a wide variety of contexts. For example, users of the World Wide Web can view and save pages or documents of interest as bookmarks or in a personal library of content (e.g., using the “My Web” feature provided to registered users by Yahoo! Inc., assignee of the present application). Users may also collect digital photographs, MP3 files, digital video, or other media content items that might be created by the user or copied from a variety of other sources. Similarly, users may belong to one or more social networks or may interact with applications, such as instant messaging applications, with which one or more friends or “buddies” of a given user may be designated.
As users amass large collections of content, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to find a particular item in the collection. Therefore, most computer systems and programs that allow users to save content items also provide mechanisms for the user to organize such content items. Frequently, this mechanism is a folder or directory structure that allows users to classify content. Typically, hierarchical organization is supported. Thus, for instance, a user can have a “Travel” folder and separate subfolders for different destinations, e.g., “Travel/US,” “Travel/Europe,” etc. Further subfolders can be created within the folders, for example, “Travel/Europe/Spain,” “Travel/Europe/Germany,” etc. By placing content items into folders, a user can group related items together.
A user can find items in folders by browsing the folder hierarchy. Numerous user interfaces exist for folder-based browsing. Typically, the interface displays the content of a current folder, including subfolders and content items therein. The user can then navigate to a subfolder or open a content item. The interface usually also provides “Up” and/or “Back” controls, allowing a user to backtrack up the folder hierarchy.
Folders, however, are not an ideal organization for all forms of content as a single content item may fit into multiple categories. For example, if a user has a photograph of herself with a movie star in front of the Eiffel Tower that was taken on a trip to Paris, the user may want to be able to file the photo under the movie star's name and also under “Paris” or “Vacation” or some similar heading. To file the photograph in more than one location, the user would need to make one or more copies of the photograph or use a storage system that allows a content item to be linked to multiple folders.
Instead of utilizing folders, a more flexible organization can be provided by allowing the user to “tag” content items with one or more “keywords” (also referred to in the art as “tags”). A user may perform searches for content items using the one or more keywords associated with the content items. For example, the abovementioned photograph may be associated with the keywords “Paris,” “Eiffel Tower,” “Vacation,” etc. However, while the organization of content items using keywords may allow a user to perform searches for a particular item of content, existing interfaces for performing such searches require a user to remember which keywords were assigned to each respective content item in order to perform a search that results in the retrieval of one or more content items. Additionally, current techniques for storing content items with associated keywords utilize a partially redundant folder structure to enable navigation and browsing.
Therefore, in order to overcome shortcomings with existing techniques for storing and searching among content items, as well as displaying content items to one or more users, embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for generating an interface that facilitates browsing saved content items that are associated with one or more user generated keywords.